


Rain

by Emrys_Llyr



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22440883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emrys_Llyr/pseuds/Emrys_Llyr
Summary: Malos got up from the table and melodramatically opened the door. “Do you want to leave?”For a moment, Jin considered it. It would be so easy to chalk this up as an extraordinary coincidence and be done with it.This is another study in 'Why did Jin agree to go with Malos that night?' How does a powerful blade end up literally in the gutter and then why does he agree to go off with his enemy?
Relationships: Metsu | Malos & Shin | Jin, Metsu | Malos/Shin | Jin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Marked Teen for some language and a tiny bit of canon typical violence.

The first time he’d killed a driver for cruelty it had shocked him to his core. 

A merc and his blade had joined his camp on the road. However hard Jin tried to suppress his ether, it was so strong now, other blades always picked it up, so at these times he would pretend he was on his way to rejoin his own driver. To be able to talk about Lora, in passing conversations with strangers, as if she were still alive became its own solace. He felt as if he were keeping her memory alive.

On this occasion however, he kept his answers brief, the vibes coming off the merc felt appallingly hostile. He watched in disgust as the wiry mean-face man yelled at his anxious and understandably jumpy blade for dropping the firewood, and for a dozen other minor infractions. Jin wished he could be anywhere else. 

It was when she had cowered immediately after knocking over her own water mug that Jin truly understood this blade had been abused for her whole life, and his rage became like white heat behind his eyes. She reminded him so much of the moment he had first laid eyes upon Lora, when she resonated with his core, cowering from the man who would have killed her. As the merc raised his arm to hit his blade, Jin found himself on his feet, staring in confusion at the hilt of his own sword protruding from between the man’s shoulder blades, not quite understanding how he had actually thrust it though the man’s heart. The blade look up at Jin in shock, and then he watched her as she stared at her own hands turning to light. A look of relief and peace crossed her delicate face as she dissolved into the night like a thousand sparks from the fire. 

“Be free”, he heard himself say.

Then he was alone with a dead merc at his feet and a blackened core crystal beside the body. He had taken up the crystal and left. 

After the blade’s crystal became lit from within once more, Jin agonised over what to do. When it seemed to vibrate to his touch, Jin had dropped it like it had burned his hand. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might be able to resonate with other blades. Was this because he now had human cells from his driver? How could he give her a life without enslaving her? Would she have preferred to be someone’s blade or simply dormant? How could he have been so arrogant to have chosen for her? And then he remembered the look of peace and relief on the blade’s face as she had returned to her core. He felt sure he had done the right thing. 

For a time it gave Jin a purpose to his wanderings. If he came across a blade who was evidently suffering, the driver would be dead before he’d seen the ice-blade move. Jin would take the core crystal and rob the dead driver of gold - which he would spend in in the blade black markets, acquiring cores when he could afford it. These he would stow in a number of caches he had hidden on different titans. 

But one blade’s freedom fighter is..? And how could he be a freedom fighter if he wasn’t giving his fellow blades freedom? He couldn’t give them back their lives, he could only give them respite away from enslavement. Life without slavery was impossible, unless he made an army of flesh-eaters. 

The heart that beat within in him anchored him to this life, and when he was not moving from place to place, he would allow himself to fall into a reverie just so he could remember her smile. He missed her laugh, her wit, he even missed her rages, not that they had been many. 

Like many bereaved people, Jin would see his lost love.

The sudden sight of the back of her head in a market, or the sense of her presence walking beside him in Gormotti fields. One golden night he saw Lora lying next to him, lit by the embers of his camp fire. They’d talked. She’d smiled. He’d tried his hardest not to go sleep for fear that she would disappear. Inevitably he'd drifted off and the cold grey of the morning had brought him emptiness once more.

His sobs had woken the crows. 

He had searched for Mikhail. To his dismay, he learned that Amalthus had taken all the children from Spessia and that those children had all gone missing. Rumours of experimentation and their demise were all he uncovered. Jin eventually resigned himself to Mikhail’s death, desperately hoping that Mikhail hadn’t suffered terribly before he died.

He was truly alone. 

~oOo~

There came a day, after he added yet another core to the dozens in a cache on Mor Ardain, when it all just stopped making sense. 

The coal-black stone sat in the midst of the bright blue glow of all the living crystals. Their vibrancy reproached him. All these people so desperate to be alive and Jin had no free life to give them. Something had gone terribly wrong. Was he cracked in his own core? Perhaps he should have resonated with the first few, given them his life. Stopped before it had got so many. How long had he been alive now? Perhaps after all this time, he had actually gone crazy. 

He buried the cache once more and made his way back to the city in a daze. He’d had a vague plan that he would take a room at an inn but the image of all those living crystals wouldn’t leave his mind. He felt sick, so sick.   
  
Darkness found him disorientated, head swimming, leaning against a crate in an alley, shivering into his cloak. When it started to rain, he barely noticed. He was so tired. Weary. Something in him had ossified. He couldn’t remember the sound of her voice. It had been many years since he’d been able to picture her. Why couldn’t he remember? Wasn’t the point of him being alive when she was not, was to remember? If he could not remember, what was the point of him living?

It rained a day and a night and Jin sat there, in a stupor, unnoticed by passers-by.

  
“You’re a blade aren’t you? Where's your Driver? Dead drunk in a ditch somewhere? No, somehow I don't think that's it.”

It took Jin sometime to realise that the man was talking to him.

“The name's Malos… I'm the same as you.”

A hand reached out to him. Jin couldn’t remember the last time someone had wanted to take his hand. Slowly, tentatively, without even knowing why, he lifted his own in response.

  
Malos took him back to his lodgings. Sat him by the fire. Gave him tea. Now that he was warmer, Jin’s head began to clear. 

“What happened to your crystal?” 

Jin realised he was not wearing his mask. He took a deep breath, “Flesh-eater.”

“I thought so. What’s your name?”

“Jin.” 

“Well, as I said, the name’s Malos…”

“I know who you are.” 

Malos looked at Jin sharply, more closely, sudden recognition in his eyes, “Ice-blade. We fought!”

“We did.”

“And yet you came with me, why?”

“It occurs to me now, that on all of Alrest, you may be the only person who remembers me.” Jin was trying to work himself up to giving Malos the real reason.

“Well now, it’s been getting on for 300 years since the war.”

Jin held his hands to the fire and then turned his hands as if he was looking at them for the first time. It hadn’t felt like 300 years and yet it had been an eternity. “So why did you bring me here? Fuck me, rob me, kill me? All three?” Having Malos be the architect of his own demise would have a nice circularity about it. “I have nothing for you to steal by the way. It’ll have to be one of the other two.”

“You hate this life don’t you?”

Jin looked up into the grey eyes, and didn’t bother hiding his dark, desperate hope. “Yes.” The Aegis had the power to obliterate anything didn’t he? Jin dropped his head in embarrassment.

“Oh.” Malos seemed flustered. “You’re here because you want to die.”  
  
His eyes shielded by his curtain of silver hair, Jin nodded almost imperceptibly. He started when he felt Malos’s heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Jin, I can’t kill you, and even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to. My core is broken. I no longer have my full power, there certainly isn’t enough to destroy a blade.” He leaned back with a sigh and watched in sympathy as Jin made an involuntary groan, pulled his head down to his knees, and laced his hands behind his neck. The stupor he had succumbed to the previous day threatened to overwhelm him again. How long he stayed like this he wasn’t sure, but he eventually straightened up when he noticed Malos bringing him some more tea and setting it beside him. 

“Thank you.” If he wasn’t about to die, he could at least drink tea. “What are we Malos? You of all people, the Aegis, surely you must know something of what we are?”

Malos looked at Jin with compassion. He shook his head reluctantly. “I don’t know what to tell you. A cruel joke has been played on us. I don’t know how much of me is mine alone or if all of what I feel, what I want is him, my abhorrence of a driver.”

Jin began to see that this Malos, was a long way from the Malos he fought in the war. The sense of regret was palpable. 

“Tell me about your driver Jin?” 

Jin smiled sadly. What else was there to do? With a deep breath, he told Lora’s story. He stared into the fire and related how he became her driver, and who she was. He almost cried in relief when he could suddenly see her face in his mind’s eye once again, hear her voice, remember her words. Malos watched as Jin’s face become animated with love, so much love. Jin took his time, relating incidents and adventures, laughing at the memories. Periodically Jin checked with Malos if he should continue and Malos encouraged him, enraptured, fascinated that this beaten-down sombre individual was suddenly full of warmth. Emboldened, Jin continued, gratefully painting the brightest picture of his beloved that he could, occasionally wondering why it is that he was opening up like this to Malos of all people. 

He didn’t notice the tears streaming down his face while he related her death; how he tore out her heart to keep her memory and himself alive. He found he couldn’t stop talking, he spoke about his grief over Mikhail, his despair at the loss of harmony between blades and humans, and of the revenge that seemed once so just, and had now become a horror to him. Eventually the torrent was over, and he was spent, trembling in exhaustion. 

After a while he looked up at Malos, amazed to see that the dark blade appeared to be stricken. 

Slowly Malos rose and came over to Jin. He crouched before him. Placing a hand on the side of Jin’s head he delicately thumbed the blood-red core crystal before wiping up some of Jin tears. He smoothed the moisture between his thumb and fingers and then raised them to his lips, tasting them. Jin looked up at him, stunned, not sure what to think. 

The dark blade looked immensely sad. “The destruction I wrought did this. I have half-destroyed you already. I corrupted your life. Until this moment, I had no idea a person so beautiful, so loving, so kind existed. If I had my full power, I would do as you ask, and finish the job. I would end your pain. But I believe I should be asking you to kill me, I deserve it.”

Malos rose and as he did, drew Jin’s sword from its sheath on Jin’s back in a sudden sweep. He wrapped the shocked ice-blade’s hand around the hilt. “I think if you struck me in one of the flaws in my crystal, you’d be able to shatter my core. It might end me properly this time. Want to try?” 

Bewildered, Jin watched as Malos backed up and removed his breast plate. Jin could see sparkles refracting firelight from where the solid core was supposed to be. The crystal was crazed, an entire section of it missing. Malos reached down, pulled up the end of the nodachi. Wincing, he sat the tip of it into a crack his crystal. Jin could see fissures radiating from it, sending lines of ether across one side of Malos’s face. 

Jin sat paralysed, staring at Malos in confusion.

“C’mon Jin, don’t you want to avenge Lora!” Malos’s face was arrogant, reckless, like he had no more shits to give.

Struggling to his feet, Jin felt his pulse rising, the temptation was enormous. Pivoting the sword tip in the crystal, he crouched slightly, lifting the hilt in line with his chin, as if he meant to drive it home. The left side of Malos’s face was now aflame with purple ether.

Malos closed his eyes and grinned.

The metallic rattle of a sword being dropped on the floor rang out. Malos opened his eyes, startled. 

“Fuck you!” In an icy rage, Jin strode over, grasped Malos’s jaw and in a low voice spoke through gritted teeth, “How _dare_ you use her name to manipulate me like that! Why should you get any peace at all, when the rest of us don’t, can’t? How _arrogant_ of you to presume that you are the architect of my life? I know what you did, yes, and I know what everyone else did. Furthermore, you didn’t make me a flesh-eater Malos - _I_ did that, my choice, my decision.” He pushed Malos’s face away, almost overbalancing him in his anger. And then Jin swayed, exhaustion overtaking him and as he started to fall, Malos caught him and gently lowered him down.

“I guess we’re not going to kill each other then”

“Not today it would appear.”

~oOo~

The two blades stood before the collection of living sapphires, watching each one twinkling with its own inner light. Jin was surprised that his recent addition was no longer black but had already reawakened, perhaps due to being in proximity to so many of its companions.

Malos was perplexed, and stroked his jaw. “How many caches like this do you have?” 

He thought for a moment, “Two on Gormott, and one each on Uraya, and Temperantia, and another one here on Mor Ardain, but this is the largest.” 

Malos just stared.

The enormity of the number of blade souls trapped in their cores hit Jin all over again. “You’re the Aegis, tell me Malos, how can these people live again without resonating with humans? How can we give them a life without them being enslaved by their own empathy to their drivers?” 

“I know I had a consciousness before my driver resonated with me, I was linked with Mythra, before Amalthus brought our cores down from Elysium. It's possible, if sufficient technology were found, they could be linked into a matrix where they could share their consciousness.” 

“But they can’t live independently without resonating with a driver.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how the Architect ordained it.”

“Hang on, are you telling me the Architect is real?” Jin had always found Indoline dogma deeply suspect.

“The architect isn’t god, he’s just a human who made this world.” 

“A human?”

“Yes. He made me, and Mythra, the master blades. He caused all blades to be made.”

“And he designed us like this?” 

“Yes, the architect, in his hubris. My father.” Malos’s voice sounded angry.

Jin tried to take in what Malos was saying but the information that they could find the blades a consciousness started to overwhelm his thoughts. 

They hid the cache again, and walked back to the city, as the silhouette of Mor Ardain’s great head became visible against false dawn’s grey light.

~oOo~

Malos placed the bowl in front of him. Jin took a bite, and if it hadn’t been his first food in many days, he might not have been able to swallow it. He continued to chew, politely, trying his best not to wince. How Malos had managed to both undercook and burn things at the same time was impressive in its own way.

“Is it ok?” Malos looked genuinely worried.

Jin started to chuckle, in spite of Malos’s slightly outraged look. The Aegis’s face was proving an open book. “Well I’m tempted to posit that while Aegises may be all knowing, they don’t have a natural flair for cooking. You appear to be just as talented as Mythra was.” The dark blade lost his umbrage to his surprise at the mention of Mythra’s name in such a context.

Jin got up and made his way to the kitchen, and for the first time in many weeks, made a meal. He surprised himself. The motions of chopping and stirring a welcome anchor in such a strange situation. Malos loomed over Jin’s shoulder, getting in the way until Jin started asking him to pass utensils or seasoning, requests he meekly obliged. The available ingredients were basic, but Jin was reasonably pleased with the result. He placed the bowls on the table and resumed the meal, watching Malos poke at it suspiciously at first, secretly satisfied when Malos started to eat with real enthusiasm.

“Not just a pretty face then.” Jin flicked his eyes up in surprise at Malos’s jest but the dark blade appeared to be concentrating on his food. 

When they had finished Jin plucked up his courage, “Tell me what happened to you after the war.”

Pushing his bowl away, Malos looked directly at Jin. Jin felt a flit in his stomach. This was Malos, his one-time enemy and yet… 

“My core was shattered. It fell into the Cloud Sea. I was…no more. And then, slowly, gradually, particles of ether reconnected the pieces of my crystal. I regained a physical form, consciousness. I was washed up on a shore in Gormott, found by an elderly farmer. Idris, and his wife, Eleri, took me in. I had absolutely no recollection of who I was. I helped them with their vegetable garden, they took care of me, and I cared for them. They must have known I was a blade, but they said nothing. They called me their gift from The Architect. Malos shakes his head as if considering this episode in his life miraculous, “Perhaps seven or eight years after I arrived, they died, him first, and then her, just a few short months after.” 

Jin was amazed to see genuine grief in the dark blade’s eyes. Malos pauses for a moment, lost in the memory. “They left me their home. I carried on with their little farm, and gradually, little by little, my memory came back. I noticed that if I swam in the Cloud Sea, more and more of who I was returned to me. It was painful and troubling. I grew angry, hateful of all that I had done. Started wondering if I could take some kind of revenge on Amalthus, but he is so powerful now.” 

Malos took a deep breath. “Shall I go on?” Jin nodded, the blue eyes questioning.

“I sold the farm, moved to Mor Ardain, to try and understand the world I live in now. I believe my memory is fully returned now. When I think about what I did…” Malos’s face became a picture of self loathing. 

“How long ago was it you arrived on Gormott?

“25 years ago, give or take.” 

“And how long have you been here?” Jin looked around the room speculatively. An impressive collection of antiquarian books and maps were scattered in random piles against the walls.

“Perhaps four years maybe?”

“You’re interested in history?” Jin gestured at the precarious library.

“At first to pass the time, to learn, but now I’m trying to find out how to cross the void to the World Tree.”

“You want to go back to where you were made?”

“Yes…I’m going to kill The Architect.” Jin started as if to laugh but the dark blade’s voice was low like a growl.

“You’re serious.” Recognition filled Jin’s stomach with fear like ice water. This was the Aegis after all, the dark bade so full of hate, who he had fought in the war. 

“Don’t you want to kill him Jin? After everything that happened to Lora, to you, after all you’ve realised about the nature of blades? What kind of sick individual creates beings who by their very nature are enslaved to others? Don’t you hate him for that? Malos was in earnest. Raising his voice, impassioned, angry. 

Jin anchored his palms on the table, letting Malos blow his storm over him while he desperately tried to think, attempting to hold back the dark dread that flowered inside him. “I didn’t understand that The Architect was real, much less a human until 12 hours ago Malos, I don’t know what to think.” Why did his voice sound so nervous? 

“Of course, don’t be alarmed, you’re not there yet.” Malos flashed an almost reptilian smile, “Trust me, you’ll come around.”

Jin realised that Malos expected him to stay, although neither of them had discussed anything beyond sharing their stories. Jin steadied his nerves. “Am I your prisoner Malos?”

The grey eyes looked suddenly disheartened. “Not at all.” Malos got up from the table and melodramatically opened the door. “Do you want to leave?”

For a moment, Jin considered it. It would be so easy to chalk this up as an extraordinary coincidence and be done with it, but the image of all those cores came into his mind once again. Malos could help him, perhaps. And what else did he have to do, other than listen and try and learn whatever he could from the Aegis?

“Shut the door Malos. I don’t think we’re done.”

“No. I don’t think so either.” 

The dark blade pushed the door shut with a gentle click. Jin was disturbed to see the tall man lean against it, rubbing his face with a slight tremble in his hand. The prospect of Jin leaving had clearly disquieted the man, given how relieved he now seemed. 

Jin felt his pulse pounding, what was he doing? What was going on? He didn’t understand, but he felt at least he owed Malos his honesty. “Your hate scares me. It reminds me of the Malos I fought in the war. It reminds me…”, Jin swallowed, “Actually it reminds me of Amalthus.”

Malos was still leaning against the door, his arms folded, eyes closed, head to one side. Dejected. “You were so fortunate Jin, you resonated with the gentle heart of a child, you had a bond with your driver filled with love.” With a shuddering breath, Malos looked imploringly at Jin. “If I were any other blade, I could ask you couldn’t I Jin? _I would beg you_. Please, _kill_ my driver. Free me from him, from his hate, his blood lust, his cruelty. Find me a new driver, a young, kind, idealistic person hoping to make the world a better place, not someone who wants to destroy it!”

“Malos”, Jin’s voice broke, shocked at the man’s palpable despair. 

“But I am an Aegis, if you kill my driver, I will still live on, in his image, forever _corrupted_ with his imprint upon me. How can ever I escape his poison?”

“Come and sit down, Malos please?” How did you even begin to comfort an Aegis?

Malos walked back to the table and sat down heavily. Jin reached out and covered one of Malos’s hands with his own “Listen to me.” Jin’s voice was soft and deadly, “I know it won’t change anything, but I can tell you this, I already have many reasons to end that worm, Amalthus, and you just gave me another. I promise you Malos, I _will_ kill your driver.”

Jin felt Malos return the grip for a moment, seemingly grateful, before withdrawing his hand. They sat in silence for a while. Jin noticed that Malos’s breathing was growing calmer. 

Malos looked up, “Why didn’t you give the cores to decent humans?”

The obvious longing was plainly visible. Sitting back, Jin wonders at the pang of sympathy he feels. “I considered it. I really did. But the act of becoming a driver in this world places you in danger. Especially now that Indol registers all drivers and their blades. I’d essentially be forcing a blade and their driver to become renegades, and I know how difficult that life is. Apart from the brief time when we served under Addam, Lora and I were in fear for all of our lives. 

“And resonating with blades yourself?”

“You knew flesh-eaters could do that?” 

“It’s logical, you have your driver’s cells embedded in you now.” The mixture of Malos’s emotional naivety and vast theoretical knowledge was bewildering Jin at every turn.

“The same problem, with a flesh-eater they’d be forced to live a life on the edge. We are…unwanted” Jin rubs the ruby core in his forehead, suddenly realising he’d spent almost his entire existence as an outlaw of one kind or another. 

“Have you ever had a home Jin?” Malos’s voice is unexpectedly gentle.

“Not in this incarnation. The only home I ever had was by her side.” He struggles to bring himself back from thoughts of Lora. “Did being with the old couple feel like home?”

“A little, before my memories returned.”

“What was that like?”

“Warm.”

Jin smiled. “I’m glad you had that.”

The dark eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Why?”

“Why am I glad? Everyone, no matter who, deserves a home, someone to come home to.”

“Would you like to stay here for a while?”

Jin looked up at the normally proud face, but the dark blade’s expression was only gentle. “We could find out if it’s possible for former enemies to get along?”

“You know what Malos, I think I’d like to find that out too, but I believe I should stipulate one condition.” Jin flashed Malos a wry look.

“Name it.”

“I’ll cook.”


End file.
